Galaxy S22+ Benchmark Scores Are Not What They Seem

Although it's hard to take them at face value, benchmark sightings, especially on Geekbench, have often become indirect sources of information for upcoming phones and computers. They mostly reveal information about the device's processor and RAM, but they might also hold clues about other specs. At the very least, they can give an idea of how powerful or weak an upcoming device might be. That seems to be the case with this Geekbench entry for what is believed to be the Samsung Galaxy S22+, provided you take the numbers with a grain of salt.

Although it doesn't exactly call the device by its commercial name, the model number SM-S906B has long been considered to be the Galaxy S22+. Having only 8GB of RAM also puts it below what's expected for an Ultra model, though the makeup of the CPU cores does match what's expected for the Exynos 2200. The latter is confirmed by an entry that names the processor's GPU as AMD's.

Geekbench detected one core running at 2.59GHz, most likely the Cortex-X2, three cores at 2.50GHz probably corresponding to Cortex-A710 cores, and four at 1.73GHz for Cortex-A510 cores. Working together, these cores yielded scores of 1073 and 3389 for single-core and multi-core tests, respectively. While not bad, those figures might seem a tad disappointing considering that they match the Snapdragon 888, not the upcoming Snapdragon 898.

It might be too easy to draw negative conclusions from those, but there is one factor that changes the picture a bit. The benchmark notes that the test was run in "energy_aware" mode, referring to a power-saving state. In other words, the actual performance of the Galaxy S22+ with an Exynos 2200 chip could be even higher and might be able to keep up with Qualcomm's next flagship mobile platform.

Unfortunately, Geekbench doesn't do GPU benchmarks, so we can't really see how well the AMD GPU performs yet and whether it was worth the partnership with Samsung. Early GFXBench runs paint a mixed picture, one where the GPU fails to surpass what Apple will be revealing in less than a day.